<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR> <STYLE></STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgColor=#ffffff> <DIV>Just saw the Weather docu last night, and it took me back to my early 20s when I had the hots for the young Bernadine Dohrn, and a romantic, if distant, view of Weather, which came primarily through reading their 1974 manifesto, "Prarie Fire," though I did have a small poster of all their mugshots tacked to my wall. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Interesting film. None of them save for Mark Rudd seemed to truly regret what they did (Naomi Jaffe says she'd do it all again). Their defense is mainly, yeah, we were a bit out of our minds, but look at the time we were in -- how could what we did compare to the daily carnage in Vietnam or the violence and racism at home? Good point to a certain point. Fact is, Weather had no mass base from which to project revolutionary violence (or resistance, if you prefer). Despite some tepid attempts to enlist working class youth, it was an upper-middle-class, white kid group that paid lip service to the plight of blacks and Latinos but really did nothing to alleviate the racist pressure those people were under, much less bring the war to a halt (Wall Street had more influence there). Plus, they acted like the mini-celebs that they were. Look at Dohrn during some of the press conferences (the big shades and wry smile), or Jeff Jones and Bill Ayers shouting "motherfucker!" and trying to act tough. Ridiculous, and part of their charm, at least then. And note that in their attempts to stop imperial violence with their brand of violence, the only people they killed were themselves. You can't buy that kind of symbolism, even with the Bissell fortune. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Oh yeah, several times during the film, I was reminded of Chuck0 . . .</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>DP</DIV></BODY></HTML>